Potholes are a ubiquitous problem that impose financial obligations on roadway authorities and present annoyances, if not costly hazards, to motorists. Furthermore, potholes are a recurring problem creating inevitable damage to roadway surfaces from traffic, construction, and the environment. Asphalt surfaces, such as roads, driveways and parking lots, may suffer damage through a combination of infiltrating water and the continuous flow of moving vehicles. The enormous number of paved roads makes it difficult for federal, state, and local municipalities to identify potholes and to manage repairs. Additionally, an inability to accurately identify potholes, unstable budgets and aggressive cost constraints of public works departments make pothole repair unreliable. Further, the potholes present expensive hazards to motorists. The American Automobile Association has estimated automobile owners spend $4.8 billion annually for repairs caused by potholes. Vehicle damage is one of many types, to include tire damage, premature wear of vehicle sub-assemblies such as shocks and struts, rim and hub damage, steering misalignment, exhaust system damage, and engine damage such as to the oil pan and mounts. In some situations, the damage renders the vehicle immobile, and in extreme circumstances, causes property damage or even severe accidents.
Conventionally, pothole identification and repair is done in an ad hoc manner. This creates an inefficient and routinely ineffective pothole management scheme. For example, a pothole is traditionally identified and located by an angry motorist report or by a road inspector. One inherent problem with both is visual inspection. The motorist reports will always be more prevalent on more frequently-traveled roads. The inspector's knowledge of the pothole location is dependent on their inspection schedule. Roads subject to increased or heavier traffic (e.g., truck traffic) are scheduled for more frequent inspections. Furthermore, when a pothole is identified, it is traditionally unpredictably categorized. For example, a motorist's pothole categorization may be determined by the degree he feels threatened by the pothole, while a roadway inspector may simple categorize potholes as either in need of repair or not in need of repair. More detailed and uniform characterization of potholes will assist with pothole recognition and repair. For example, difficulties in repair are encountered when a pothole is located on the edge of a road or on a bridge deck. Also, a change in substrate or in general material conditions may determine the type of repair.
Some efforts have been made to improve the process of roadway hazard identification. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,571,029 to Dai et al (“Dai”) discloses an on-vehicle system for identifying and reporting roadway conditions. The system has an operator-selectable user interface to identify occurrence of an external roadway condition, a global positioning system receiver and a wireless communications system. Reportable hazards include potholes, obstacles or debris in the highway, snow or ice patches, fog, unusual traffic or pedestrian activity, and localized incidences, such as presence of disabled or emergency vehicles. A GPS receiver is incorporated to estimate position, speed, and heading of the hazard. The information is encoded as a message sent to a central server. However, Dai fails to teach several novel features of the present invention, including categorizing potholes, directing data sources to acquire pothole identification data and generating reports useful for repair of the pothole. Dai is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Some work has been conducted to map potholes, such as that at Worcester Polytechnic Institute by Angelini et al. (“Angelini”). Angelini discloses a data collection system installed in automotive vehicles to monitor road or highway pavement conditions. The system is based on recording and analyzing the output from an accelerometer mounted near a front wheel shock absorber. The data from the accelerometer is time and position tagged with GPS data and stored on a computer. Geographical Information System (GIS) software is then used to remap the vehicle-acquired data to create a user viewable city map. The data-acquiring vehicles are intended to be city vehicles tasked to roam about a city to map potholes. Angelini, however, fails to teach several novel features of the present invention, including fusing pothole identification data obtained from disparate sources, directing data sources to acquire pothole identification data, and generating reports useful for repair of potholes. Angelini is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Thus, there is a long-felt need for a system and method for sensing and managing pothole location and pothole characteristics, as provided in the present invention. An additional aspect of the present invention is to provide a system that may acquire, fuse, and analyze pothole sensing data from several sources to identify potholes in need of maintenance or repair. Further, the system may be configured to create and distribute recurring reports of pothole repair data for use by roadway officials. The system and method provides several benefits, to include enabling a higher density of repair efforts with a more cost effective utilization of material, labor, and equipment. Less-frequently traveled roads, such as local or tertiary roads, will be able to have pothole locations identified as easily as the more traveled roads, such as secondary or collector roads and primary or arterial roads. Another objective of the information is to collect, organize and catalog pothole information in a central location for immediate and easy access. Additional information about the potholes, such as pothole population and severity, may be included to allow individual entities to coordinate efforts to more efficiently schedule pothole repair.